Stone Barrington 06-11

up?”
    “It’s kind of confidential.”
    “Come into my office,” Marty said. He lifted the counter barrier, let Sandy through, then led him through the door into a large, comfortably furnished office with a six-foot-tall safe against one wall. “Take a seat.”
    Sandy sat down. “I’ve got a particular job to do for a client, and I need something custom.”
    “Tell me about your business,” Marty said.
    “I got started putting in alarms for people, and I did good work, so my business grew, and once in a while, a client would ask me to do some special work—personal stuff, usually—guy suspected his wife of screwing around, suspected his business partner of stealing, stuff like that.”
    “I know the kind of thing,” Marty said. He held up his hands. “Not that I’d ever do anything illegal.”
    “Yeah, of course. It’s like this…”
    Marty held up a hand and came around the desk. “Before we have this conversation, I’m going to have to frisk you.”
    “Yeah, sure,” Sandy said, standing up and holding his arms away from his body.
    Marty proceeded to not just frisk him, but to do a body search more thorough than any Sandy had seen since he had finished his training at the Farm. He started with a normal search, looking for a recorder, then he went over Sandy’s clothing in a minute way that would have detected a hidden microphone. He took Sandy’s cell phone and set it on his desk, then he unbuckled Sandy’s belt, inspected it and handed it back to him.
    “Let me see your shoes,” Marty said.
    Sandy shucked them off and handed them over.
    Marty inspected the soles, the insoles and the laces. He handed them back, then ran his fingers through Sandy’s hair and checked his wristwatch. After several minutes of this, he waved him back to his chair.
    Marty picked up the cell phone, removed the back and the battery, then took a small screwdriver from his desk drawer and partially disassembled the phone. Satisfied, he reassembled it and handed it to Sandy.
    “Sorry about that,” Marty said. “I can’t be too careful.”
    “It’s perfectly okay,” Sandy said. “Believe me, I understand. Can I speak freely now?”
    “Go ahead; what do you need?”
    “I’ve got a client who’s in the middle of a big divorce. He wants me to bug his own house—he’s moved out. He wants a mike in every room—just audio, no cameras. My problem is, his wife rarely goes out for more than a few minutes. The most time I’m going to get inside without being disturbed is, maybe, thirty minutes. You think you could put something together that would work for me?”
    “Sure, but it ain’t going to be cheap.”
    “How long would it take you to get it together?”
    “How about ten minutes?” Marty said.
    Sandy grinned. “Ten minutes would be good.”
    Marty went to a large safe in the corner, worked the combination with his body between Sandy and the safe, and opened it. He removed a plastic box, and as he turned to close the door of the safe Sandy was able to get a glimpse of the inside. It was filled with electronic components, what appeared to be a considerable amount of cash and two handguns on the top shelf. Marty locked the safe and returned to his desk.
    “You recognize this?” he asked, opening the plastic box and handing Sandy a black, plastic object.
    “Looks like a standard domestic circuit breaker,” Sandy replied, turning it over in his hand.
    “How about this?” Marty asked, handing him a plastic object about two inches long and half an inch wide. It was hinged lengthwise, and short spikes protruded from the back.
    “You got me,” Sandy said. “Never seen anything like it.” In fact, he had seen something exactly like it. Marty was copying things that the Technical Services Department at the Agency had been making for years.
    “Well,” Marty said, sounding very pleased with himself, “here’s what you do with your client’s house. You go to the main breaker box and replace one of the breakers with mine. Then you go into each room of the house you want to bug, unscrew a power receptacle and crimp the other little thing so that the spikes penetrate both the positive and negative wires. Then you go outside and find an outdoor power receptacle and plug this into it.” He handed Sandy a small, black box with a short antenna attached. “What you’ve done is turned the whole house’s wiring grid into a receiver system that’s picked up and retransmitted by the box with the